So this vote that Mrs May lost, I'm assuming it is some irrelevance

[Monty92]

The vote was never really supposed to take place. The Soubry amendment was supposed to be passed, meaning the vote would be postponed. However, the Government (which really does combine arrogance and incompetence to a quite spectacular degree) gave way on the Soubry amendment and tried to force its motion through anyway in the belief that the ERG would acquiesce (a naive belief dear old Monty clearly shared). The Government miscalculated appallingly, the ERG abstained and the motion was defeated, leaving May unable to claim she has any Parliamentary majority for her deal.

That last bit is fundamentally untrue. The ERG were quite clear that the reason they abstained was not because they'd changed their mind on the Brady amendment (which they previously supported and which endorses May's deal) but because supporting yesterday's specific motion would have also taken No Deal off the table.

In fact, after the vote Steve Baker of the ERG made a notable slip of the tongue, admitting he would vote for a deal that had "changes" to the backstop, before panicking and correcting himself that he meant "removing" the backstop.

So my original (and derided by you) prediction that the ERG will vote for a deal that still had the backstop (and probably had no meaningful changes to it) still holds firm.

[Burney]

That last bit is fundamentally untrue. The ERG were quite clear that the reason they abstained was not because they'd changed their mind on the Brady amendment (which they previously supported and which endorses May's deal) but because supporting yesterday's specific motion would have also taken No Deal off the table.

In fact, after the vote Steve Baker of the ERG made a notable slip of the tongue, admitting he would vote for a deal that had "changes" to the backstop, before panicking and correcting himself that he meant "removing" the backstop.

So my original (and derided by you) thesis that the ERG will vote for a deal with no meaningful changes to the backstop still holds firm.

But what you seem quite unable to get through your head, m, is that what you define as 'not significant' may in fact be really quite significant as far as we and Brussels are concerned. All sides know that the desired end-game is an amendment to the language on the backstop that offers the UK an escape route. That would be extremely 'significant'.